Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Beirut .... sort of, today ...

A Foreign Reporter sent this today: (11.04AM/EDT)
"....i spent the entire day running around all the flashpoints in beirut, wherever there were mobs, shootings, explosions, i got harassed by various militias from both sides, but i was really shocked at the behavior of amal. i've spent a lot of time with mustaqbal militiamen, who of course are thuggish and racist and their militias are getting better organized, and thats all frightening, but they seem very weak and almost cowardly when compared with the amal thugs i saw today, who were very provocative. it had nothing to do with the labor union strike for them, it was just a show of force to specifically intimidate sunnis.
even in iraq i havent seen this kind of anti sunni sectarianism, its couched in anti baathi or anti wahabi language. obviously i've seen anti shiite sectarianism all over the place among sunnis in the region
they had switch blades, clubs, and they even had small molotov cocktail bottles in their pockets in case they needed them. they threw stones at the army without provocation, and the army was basically letting them do whatever they wanted, and proved how weak it was, the army guys were begging the amal and hizballah guys to behave basically. it was clear today how pathetically weak the lebanese army and police are. in most cases they just stood by and watched as protesters did whatever they wanted, in other cases, depending on their affiliation, they actually physically helped both sunni and shiite militias.
when the amal guys threw stones at the soldiers, all some of the soldiers did was throw them back
when the call to prayer started from the sunni mosque across the street in tariq al jadida, the amal guys started shouting various religious shiite slogans, insulting sunnis etc.
it was quite obvious that the hizballah men present were controlling them when they looked like they were about to cross to the sunni side. it was as if hizballah has these amal pitbulls who are just foaming at the mouth eager to attack and kill, and hizballah is letting them bark and bite a little, to show the other side that its holding the leash and can let go at any time and the amal pitbulls would destroy anything in their way, which it was very clear they wanted to do
this country is so fucked, the sunni militias now run checkpoints and demand IDs and act just like shiite militias"

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7 comments:

mo said...

Im not doubting the report but how exactly does Nir tell the Hizballah and Amal people apart?

Or has the media gotten so used to the discipline of Hizballah that any Shia behaving badly must by elimination be Amal?

(Although I admit that my knowledge of Amal members, esp. those based in Beirut, would if i were viewing the same scene lead to the same conclusions)

mo said...

By the way, is CNN boycotting Lebanese news? Not a single word on the troubles today from Hariris favourit news network

G, M, Z, or B said...

they must be busy preping Anderson Cooper for his next trip to Lebanon to further "expose Hezbollah Media Manipulations" ...

mo said...

Update for you. Across the road from my Dads house this morning, Mustaqbal members started firing into the street from their offices near corniche al mazraa and the people down on the street stormed the offices and took the shooters to nearby soldiers.

G, M, Z, or B said...

Yup.
Salahuddin could've used these elite units at Hittin'...
(sigh, sigh sigh)

mo said...

lol, Nah they would have stood on the battlements of Jaffa and fired at their own people...

Anonymous said...

So Nir Rosen is traveling again with his fake US passport? And he can figure out who is who- depsite "being new to the country" and not knowing a word of Arabic? Or is his stuff channelled through CAMERA.org?